Office 365 – Productivity Boost Through AI Tools

The growth in multimedia content has been phenomenal in the digital age. Managing and analysing this content, however, becomes ever more challenging.

Do you find it difficult to find a video, image or audio file when you need it? Does it affect your productivity and increase your frustration level?

“A key to being productive is leveraging existing content so you’re not reinventing the wheel,” said Omar Shahine, partner director of program management for OneDrive and SharePoint.

Early last week, Microsoft announced that before the end of this year they will be adding more machine learning and AI tools to Office 365 to help businesses increase productivity and make more informed decisions. The tools include:

Automated transcription,

Image search,

Intelligent file- recommendations,

File insights, and

Intelligent sharing.

Automated transcription

The AI-enabled automated transcription service will be available for video and audio files stored in OneDrive and SharePoint for Office 365 subscribers. This service will support more than 320 different video and audio file types. It not only allows you to have a full transcript while viewing a video clip or listening to a voice recording, it also means that you will be able to search through audio or video files by what is said in the file. It makes video clips and voice recordings searchable, so users can find relevant files easier and faster. Automated transcriptions are not the only advancement – the AI-powered service will also soon have in-video face detection and automatic captions capabilities.

Image search

Image search uses AI to analyse where photos were taken and to recognise objects and text in photos. It allows users to search for images just like searching for documents. For example, users could search for important information from a folder of presentation snapshots or photos of notes on a whiteboard etc. It will make follow-up work from meetings much more efficient.

Intelligent file- recommendations

Intelligent file recommendations is a new file view for OneDrive and the Office.com. It will analyse a user’s working behaviour then recommend files based on what the user has been working on and their activity on recent content shared across Microsoft 365. It will then best-match which file is relevant to the user.

AI also makes it easier to create new documents by reusing existing content. The Tap feature in Word 2016 and Outlook 2016 intelligently recommends content stored in OneDrive and SharePoint by understanding the context of what a user is working on. This allows the user to leverage and repurpose a paragraph, table, graphic, chart, or more from another file while working on a new document or email.

File insights

File insights provide analytics on files stored in OneDrive and SharePoint. It provides information such as the number of document views, viewer information and what they did – then provides a summary to help the user decide on their next action.

Intelligent sharing

Intelligent sharing allows a user to share relevant content stored in OneDrive and SharePoint, e.g. PowerPoint presentations and photos taken during a meeting, perhaps of a whiteboard brainstorming session, with fellow attendees after a meeting. It helps users to keep everyone informed and make sure everyone is aligned and able to move to the next step.

If you want to increase your productivity and experience these new AI features, get in touch with Team64 by leaving a message here.